Revelations
Disclaimer: Do not own; not for profit
Booth finds out about a horrible event from Bones' past when a new murder links back to one of her foster families. Rated M for non-detailed mentions of physical/sexual assault
They pulled her out of the river. These are the cases Bones exceled at. She had cause of death before they ever shipped the body back to the lab. "16, female, pregnant at time of death. Probably 4 months. Blunt force trauma to the torso. The ribs are broke. I've got 2 shards at least sticking out of the right lung. Cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, shock, whichever one got her first, that injury killed her."
"Ship the body to the Jeffersonian," Booth added; she made his job so much easier.
"I need water and silt samples, and temperature readings Zach, I don't want to come back out here." She walked back to the Jeffersonian van that Zach had driven over and started peeling off her suit. She wasn't gonna like this case.
"What, that's it? We've only been here 20 minutes." Booth jogged back to her with his note pad and pen in hand.
"You have age, sex, and cause of death. Dentals are intact; I'll have a name before lunch. Anything else you need from me?" Booth was taken aback; she hadn't been this rude to him in a while.
"Umm, no, you gonna wait for the van or you want to drive back with me?" She looked at him closely. What she really wanted was to go get drunk somewhere, curl up and cry herself to sleep. She took a deep sigh and Booth took notice. "Something wrong Bones?"
"I just don't like the young ones." She finished taking off her suit and threw it into the van.
"16 and pregnant, not exactly an innocent little kid there Bones." She turned around and glared at him so harshly he took a step back. "I just mean, we've had younger, we've had little kids before." She started walking to his SUV and he followed quickly behind not getting their fast enough to open the door for her.
They drove back to the lab in silence. She was mad, he wasn't sure if it was at him, but she was definitely mad. He left her to stew and went back to the Hoover.
Angela dropped off the dental match on her desk, "Sarah Nathers, 16, she ran away 2 months ago. At least according to her social worker."
"She was a foster child?" Bones grabbed the file out of Angela's hand. Angela knew of her past in foster care and didn't take the gesture personally.
"Yeah, she ran away from a foster house, John and Mary Wilkenson." Bones visibly paled.
"Thank you Angela, have you told Booth?"
"No"
"I will. Thank you." She called Zach in and barked an order for a DNA test of the fetus and then rushed to put on her jacket.
She grabbed the missing persons file as well as her own report on the girls injures and raced to Booth's office. "We have an ID." She said it before she had even gotten through the door, Booth looked up in surprise.
"Great, what have we got?"
"It's all here. Booth, I need to remove myself from this case." She set the files in his waiting hands and turned to leave. He opened the file and saw Sarah's picture. He hoped around his desk and cut her off, closing his door with his foot.
He held the picture up, "Oh, God Bones, you know her?" he couldn't imagine how she could, but he felt horrible for his earlier comment at the crime scene. Bones did a lot of work with charities that helped foster kids, maybe she had been a volunteer, or maybe Bones had mentored her, or counseled her.
"No, I ah, I just…" she closed her eyes for a moment and took another deep breath. "I know the foster family she disappeared from. You should consider John Wilkenson your prime suspect. We're doing a DNA test now; he was most likely the father of Sarah's baby."
"And this is gut instinct?" Bones never talked about her time in foster care, not ever. For her to even mention it now… he got a sick feeling in the very pit of his stomach. "Bones? Why do you think he's gonna be the father?"
He took another step closer to her and she rushed around him to the door. "When you get to his house, look in the basement, look at the pipes in the ceiling, one strong enough to hold Sarah's frame. I need to go." She backed out of his office and ran down the stairs so he wouldn't catch her at the elevator.
Booth stood in the middle of his office dumb founded. He paged through the files Bones had given him. Sarah had been hung by her wrists and beaten in the torso with a wooden baseball bat. She had miscarried, but she died of the wound to her lung. He looked through John Wilkenson's file and got the address; he had been registered as a foster parent in PA for the past 7 years, Ohio before that. He ran a background check, several small misdemeanors for bar fights, public intoxication, nothing heavy enough to get him disqualified as a foster care provider, not with the system stretched to its limits the way it was.
Booth called ahead and had the locals pick him up, he wanted this done and over with, he needed to find his partner, find out what happened to her. The whole time he drove to PA he kept picturing that girl hanging from a ceiling in a basement, being beaten, crying out in pain, crying for her child not to be harmed, but that girl wasn't Sarah, that girl he kept picturing was a young Bones.
He examined the house first. Took pictures of the ceiling in the basement, there was a large pipe with scratch marks on it, like something had ben chained to it. The whole basement still reeked of bleach as well.
He had a confession within an hour and Booth left the PA field office to process him. He raced back to DC, he called Bones 3 times, he wanted her to know the man had confessed, that he was already locked up, she didn't answer. Bones always answered her phone, always. He held his breath as he knocked on her door. It was taking her way to long to answer.
"Bones, it's me, open up, I have good news." He knocked several more times before he finally heard her slide the chain and open the door.
"He confessed?"
"In record time, I didn't even need the DNA results," he pushed past her inside the apartment. "Bones, how'd you know?"
"Do you really need me to answer that question?" she walked away from him and wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes weren't red, Booth was surprised but relieved, he was afraid she was in here alone, sobbing.
"Temperance," he walked after her and turned her around, holding both her shoulders. She took several deep breaths and looked away from him, out the window.
"Have you caught enough murderers yet?"
"What?" he tried to get her to look at him but she wouldn't meet his eyes.
"You said you wanted to catch as many murderers as people that you sniped. Have you done that yet?"
"Yeah, I have, I'm just about even." He didn't know where she was going with this, but he was happy to keep her talking.
"He sent me back as soon as the last bruise healed. I never told anyone. I left a girl there, Amy; he did the same thing to her. He didn't kill her, she killed herself. She had seen what he did to me, and when she found out she was pregnant, she got so scared she killed herself. If I had turned him in back then, she would still be alive. You put away murderers to even a score; I do it to alleviate guilt. Sarah's death should have been prevented Booth, I should have told someone after Amy, not harbored guilt. Both their blood is on my hands."
Booth wrapped his arms around her and held onto her as tightly as he could. She had been raped, that bastard had raped her, and gotten her pregnant, he had beaten her, killed her child, and then given her back like a faulty toy. And all she cared about was the other girls he had hurt. He didn't know what to say to her, his head was reeling with what he had just learned, he stoked her hair and whispered into her ear, "It's okay, he's put away now, he'll never hurt anyone else. You put him away Bones, You stopped him."
She slowly gave in and relaxed her body against his. She clung to his shirt and he felt a few tears hit his cheek. He didn't realize he was crying too. So many people had called Bones heartless, cold, even a bitch, if they only knew the kind of hurt she lived with, carried with her every day. His heart broke for her.